You live in Berkeley Springs.
You are sixty-five or older.
You want the vaccine.
You signed up a month ago.
And you have not been able to get the vaccine.
Almost 3,000 Morgan County residents (2,962 or 16.6 percent of the population) have already received at least their first dose of the vaccine.
That includes 2,037 residents 65 or older.
But there are still hundreds of elders who want the vaccine, have been on the list for weeks and still have not been called.
At the same time, more than 900 residents under 65 have received at least their first dose.
Many of those are in a priority population like healthcare workers, long-term care workers, pharmacy workers, emergency response workers and teachers.
But there are non front line citizens who have received the vaccine while seniors wait.
Elder agita shot up throughout Morgan County today as Governor Jim Justice announced that vaccines would now be available to West Virginia residents 50 and older, education workers age 40 to 50 and everyone 16 and older with certain medical conditions.
“We’re going to move more aggressively to try to get more people vaccinated and widen the scope of our vaccination efforts because, at the end of the day, we’re going to start having more vaccines available to us and we want to just keep pushing them out,” Governor Justice said. “Remember, the last thing we want in West Virginia is to have a bunch of vaccines just sitting on the shelf. So we’re moving as quickly as we possibly can, West Virginia. We continue to run to the fire.”
At the same time, the Morgan County Health Department today confirmed that there were problems with getting seniors vaccinated.
“Our appointment scheduling volunteers are having issues with either not being able to reach some of our residents who have registered for vaccine, having to sort through information for residents who have registered multiple times or, in some cases are reaching those who have already been able to get their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine,” the Department said in a Facebook post.
“To any of our Morgan County residents, ages 65 and older only, who have not yet received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, please call 304-500-2081 and leave a message with your name and phone number for a call back. Do not leave a message for any other reason or any other age group. Any call back received will only be for vaccine scheduling for the priority group currently being vaccinated.”
(Update March 4, 2021: A new headline has been added to more accurately reflect the contents of the article.)